Big Girl’s Birthday!

We had another birthday.  I keep threatening to put bricks on my kids’ heads, but they object …

She was thrilled to get a pencil from her teacher at school.

And she opened her cards without complaining before she went for the big present.  C meanwhile got clobbered by the other two, who felt L was getting too much attention and needed to demand some more of their own.

Then came the big moment.  I laughed at Pillow Pets and swore I would never get my kids one … but when she’s been begging for nearly a year … it is her birthday, after all.  She is now the proud owner of a Multi-colored Unicorn Pillow Pet.

Then we got down to the good stuff.  We even had lemon-strawberry ice cream to eat with the cake.

Her birthday present from her Grandma didn’t get her until the day after her birthday, but she was okay about that.  In fact, she said it was exciting to have two birthdays instead of one.

She got a Merida doll, and she loves it.  She’s even been kind enough to share the three little bears now and then with J, who adores them.

S ran off to get her Rapunzel doll, and the two couldn’t even be bothered to look up and smile for me from then on.  It was a good birthday.

The Cake

So, last year L requested a “Buttery Lemon Citrus Cake” for her birthday, and I discovered the first cake I’ve ever met that I didn’t like.  This year, she requested a chocolate cake, which is unusual for her, because she usually says she doesn’t like chocolate.  Then she casually remarked that she wanted chocolate cake because it’s mine and S’s favorite.  While I found that very sweet, I had to set her straight that her birthday cake was for her.  If she wanted chocolate, she could have it, if she wanted something else, I would make it for her.  I had her go through my cookbooks, and she settled on this:

Easy Lemon Cake from Kraft Recipes

But … I can’t ever do something easy, and this one called for a boxed lemon cake mix.  So, I got a recipe from a friend for lemon cake and lemon frosting.

This was the first time I tried out a recipe that used 7up as the rising agent.  I’d heard of people using soda in cakes, but I hadn’t done it myself.  When the cake rose up without problems, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I think I may cook my cakes a little longer than needed, but I’ve also bitten into a raw middle piece of cake, and I prefer a little over to a little under.

 

I was worried about the pudding layer on top of the cake.  The recipe from Kraft said to frost with cool whip, but I was making the frosting recipe that came with my friend’s cake recipe.  I added two extra tablespoons of cream to loosen it up, so it would spread nicely over the pudding layer.

I think it turned out well.  At least, before I wrote one it … I don’t have the best handwriting with a pen, so when I try to write with a bag of icing … well, it looks like this:

And when you cut it open, it looks like this:

Ok, so it’s not the same as the picture from the Kraft website, but I do think it turned out well, and L sat down and ate her whole piece!  If I do it again, I may add some lemon extract to the cake and the frosting.  It was enough to make you think of a lemon, but not quite bold enough for me.  Still, it was very good.

Sledding

Ever since we got home from our Christmas Vacation, we have been tromping through snow.  We’ve been below freezing most of the time, so it’s mostly still here.  We took the kids out sledding the other day.  I apparently need to find a new hill, because it wasn’t very exciting, and they ended up just playing in the snow, but we did have a good time.

The girls each wore their fuzzy hats from Christmas.  I thought they were adorable!  (My girls, not the hats … well, I like the hats, but my girls are the cutest part!)

If you don’t look close enough, it’s hard to tell the two girls apart!

I don’t know if J remembers snow from last year, but he was sure enthralled with it this year.

Both J and S ate snow on our way back to the car.

We went out on the warmest day that week, and it was still only 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  On one hand it was nice, because they didn’t really get wet.  They got snow all over themselves, but it didn’t melt.  Oh, and I went out and bought L snow boots the next day, so don’t feel too bad for her in her tennis shoes. 

Pass it on

A few days ago, I opened my email to find a surprise – my dad sent me a tutorial on how to make his homemade bread.  Now, I already use his recipe to make sweet rolls for my family, but I don’t often make his bread.  He’d been asked to put together instructions on it, and I was lucky enough to be on his email list when he finished.

I was tickled.  It’s a beautiful piece of technical writing, complete with pictures and explanations.  I loved it!

I told my kids how, growing up, Dad would often pull the bread out of the machine and leave it, for just a few minutes, to cool.  While it sat there, someone else would come in, chop off the heel, spread it with butter and honey, and make off with it.  Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was someone else.  Always, Dad would come back and exclaim, “Who stole my heel?!”  And then he would smile … because it was a compliment to his bread that we liked it so much.

So, this week I had S’s preschool group at my house.  We had the letter “R”.  In an effort to redeem myself from serving marshmallows and M&Ms for “M” day a few weeks ago, I decided to make rolls for snack.

If I had thought about it earlier, I’d have taken a picture of the whole tray, but I didn’t, so here’s what was left after dinner that first night.

First, as soon as the rolls were out of the oven, I snagged the corner roll, cut it in half, spread it with butter and honey, and took it into the living room. 

Now, the men I know, when they are sitting in front of a computer, they become oblivious to the world around them.  The house could explode, and as long as the computer and their chair remained in place, they wouldn’t notice. 

I put the roll in front of his mouth, and he took a bite.  He chewed.  Suddenly he turned his head, looked at me, and said, “Oh my goodness, that is SO good!”

Good enough to distract my husband from the computer – that’s saying something.

Then, at dinner, I’d taken a roll, cut it in half, and spread one piece of it with jam.  I got distracted by one of the girls asking for milk, and when I looked back at my plate, J had reached over and snatched my roll right off my plate!

He took a bite, then smiled at me and said, “Mine!”

Maybe one day, when my kids are grown up with families of their own, I’ll send them a tutorial on how to make bread, and their own kids will steal the heels. 

(Even as I wrote this post, I fed the kids rolls for bedtime snack.  I thought I’d get to eat the extra half of roll, but J snatched it away from me again.  )

Christmas 2012

For weeks before Christmas, I kept wanting to write posts about our upcoming trip and my anxieties about it.  Three small children in a sedan for twelve hours (assuming all goes well), staying in unfamiliar houses where my children may or may not sleep well, and then twelve hours back?  It was a nightmare to think about.  I ended up not posting anything on fb or here, because I’m paranoid about the internet and who might figure out that my beloved little house was going to be empty for a week and a half?  I couldn’t risk it.

And now that I can post about the trip … well, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.  In fact, it turned out rather well.

We started Christmas early by opening presents from my Grandma and Grandpa a week before Christmas.  This way, I figured, they would have time to play with and appreciate the toys before I packed up the car and left them behind, only to get shoved aside when we came home with the rest of the new presents.  It was a stroke of brilliance on my part.  For four days the girls played with their books and J played with his digger, and they thought they’d already had a wonderful Christmas!

Then we loaded up.  I’m happy to say we made the trip to C’s Dad’s house as quick as anyone has crossed the state of Wyoming in the winter.  When we got there, we found:

My sister in law, with her beautiful new baby!!!  (I just love this picture.  I hope she does too!!!)  We got to be there when he was blessed on Sunday afternoon.

The kids had all their cousins on their Dad’s side to play with, and play they did!  I was impressed at how grown-up my two girls are, when they are surrounded by older kids.

My in-laws were wonderfully accommodating.  They don’t do Santa in their families, but they did this time, for my kids.

Santa just fills stockings in our family, little treats and toys, and I love the look on L’s face when she got this umbrella she’s been begging me for.

We had a white Christmas, but we didn’t bring boots or snow clothes with us, so we didn’t actually get out in the snow.  We did have L’s favorite breakfast, though, French Toast Bake.  Yum!

J was pleased with his haul.

S was her usual, adorable, self.

We opened our stockings, then ate breakfast before lining up to open the rest of the presents.  Here are all of the cousins in one picture … from two months old to 16 years!

I even caught C holding the baby! 

Then we went to a plane museum!  I do enjoy airplane museums … but I think it’s mostly because it reminds me of my own childhood.  My mom will tell you how we used to complain, “Not another airplane!!!  Can we go yet?!”  Now it makes me happy to see my kids get all excited about planes and asking questions.

It also makes me glad to have a husband who knows the answers.  I can’t name more than two of the planes in the warehouse, but C can rattle off stats like my dad.  He’s a great teacher.

J was a little wary of the planes.  He wanted an adult with him before getting too close, hence, his two sisters lined up nicely for the picture, but he refused to get any closer without Daddy.

But the Earth wasn’t frightening.

The kids got to go skydiving …

And fly the Wright Brother’s plane …

They raced around the museum for hours without stopping, which is why this “would have been perfect” picture is blurry … they wouldn’t stop moving.

And by time the camera was ready to take a second picture, this was all that was left:

The legend is that this B-52 was landed on accident at Lowry AFB, and the runway was too short for it to take off again.  There it stayed, and now it’s part of the museum.  I really hope it’s just a legend.  I’d feel bad for that poor pilot, landing it there and putting it out of commission.

The trip back wasn’t as nice as the trip out, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, either.  We arrived home safe and sound to find our bunny still alive and our house unmolested (as my overactive imagination told me would happen).

And to finish off the Christmas Season we let the kids demolish the Gingerbread house when we got home.